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The Caddoan languages are a
family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
of languages native to the
Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, a ...
spoken by tribal groups of the central
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, from present-day
North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...
south to Oklahoma. All Caddoan languages are critically endangered, as the number of speakers has declined markedly due to colonial legacy, lack of support, and other factors.


Family division

Five languages belong to the Caddoan language family: Kitsai and Wichita have no speakers left. Kitsai stopped being spoken in the 19th century when its members were absorbed into the
Wichita tribe The Wichita people or Kitikiti'sh are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. Historically they spoke the Wichita language and Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. They are indigenous to Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. ...
. Wichita stopped being spoken in 2016, when the last native speaker of Wichita,
Doris McLemore Doris Jean Lamar-McLemore (April 16, 1927 – August 30, 2016) was an American teacher who was the last native speaker of the Wichita language, a Caddoan language spoken by the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, indigenous to the U.S. states of O ...
(who left recordings and language materials), died. All of the remaining Caddoan languages spoken today are severely endangered. As of 2007, Caddo is spoken by only 25 people, Pawnee by 10, and Arikara by 10. Caddo and Pawnee are spoken in Oklahoma by small numbers of tribal elders. Arikara is spoken on the Fort Berthold Reservation in
North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, ...
. Prior to colonization and US expansion, speakers of Caddoan languages were more widespread The Caddo, for example, lived in northeastern
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, southwestern
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...
, and northwestern
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is bord ...
, as well as southeastern Oklahoma. The Pawnee formerly lived along the Platte River in what is now
Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the sout ...
.


Prehistory

Glottochronology Glottochronology (from Attic Greek γλῶττα ''tongue, language'' and χρόνος ''time'') is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages.Sheila Embleton ...
is a controversial method of reconstructing, in broad detail, the history of a language and its relationships. In the case of Proto-Caddoan, it appeared to have divided into two branches, Northern and Southern, more than 3000 years ago. (The division of the language implies also a geographic and/or political separation.) South Caddoan, or Caddo proper, evolved in north-eastern Texas and adjacent Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Other than Caddo, no daughter languages are known, but some unrecorded ones likely existed in the 16th and the 17th centuries. Northern Caddoan evolved into several different languages. The language that became Wichita, with several different dialects, branched off about 2000 years ago. Kitsai separated from the Northern Caddoan stem about 1200 years ago, and Pawnee and Arikara separated 300 to 500 years ago.


External relations

Adai, a
language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...
from Louisiana is known only from a 275-word list collected in 1804, and may be a Caddoan language, however documentation is too scanty to determine with certainty. Adjacent to the Caddo lived the Eyeish or Ais—not to be confused with the Ais of Florida—who also spoke a language that may have been related to Caddoan. Some linguists believe that the Caddoan,
Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoia ...
, and Siouan languages may be connected in a Macro-Siouan language family, but their work is suggestive and the theory remains hypothetical. Similar attempts to find a connection with the
Algonquian languages The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically simi ...
have been inconclusive. There is insufficient evidence for linguists to propose a hypothetical Macro-Algonquian/Iroquoian language family.


Reconstruction

Some Proto-Northern Caddoan reconstructions by Chafe (1979):Chafe, Wallace L. 1979. Caddoan. In Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun (eds.), ''The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment'', 213-235. Austin: University of Texas Press. : For Proto-Caddoan, Chafe (1979) reconstructs the following phonemes. *stops: /p t k/ *affricate: /ts/ *spirant: /s/ *resonants: /w n r/ and /j/ *laryngeals: /ʔ h/ *vowels: /i a u/


Vocabulary

Below is a list of basic vocabulary of Northern Caddoan languages from Parks (1979):Parks, Douglas R. 1979. The Northern Caddoan Languages: Their Subgrouping and Time Depths. ''Nebraska History'' 60: 197-213. :


Notes


Further reading

*
Campbell, Lyle Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in general. Campbell is professor emeri ...
. (1997). ''American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Chafe, Wallace L. (1973). Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan. In T. Sebeok (Ed.), ''Current Trends in Linguistics'' (Vol. 10, pp. 1164–1209). The Hague: Mouton. (Reprinted as Chafe 1976). * Chafe, Wallace L. (1976). "Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan", In T. Sebeok (Ed.), ''Native Languages in the Americas'' (pp. 527–572). New York: Plenum. (Originally published as Chafe 1973). * Chafe, Wallace L. (1976). ''The Caddoan, Iroquioan, and Siouan languages''. Trends in Linguistics; State-of-the-art report (No. 3). The Hague: Mouton. . * Chafe, Wallace L. (1979). ''Caddoan''. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.), ''The languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment'' (pp. 213–235). Austin: University of Texas Press. . * Chafe, Wallace L. (1993). "Indian Languages: Siouan–Caddoan". ''Encyclopedia of the North American colonies'' (Vol. 3). New York: C. Scribner's Sons . * Lesser, Alexander; & Weltfish, Gene. (1932). "Composition of the Caddoan linguistic stock". ''Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections'', ''87'' (6), 1-15. * Melnar, Lynette R. Caddo Verb Morphology(2004) University of Nebraska Press, * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The Languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Taylor, Allan. (1963). "Comparative Caddoan", ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''29'', 113-131.


External links


American Indian Studies Research Institute's Northern Caddoan Linguistic Text Corpora
Indiana University-Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest campu ...

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(includes Arikara, Skiri Pawnee, South Band Pawnee, Assiniboine akoda and Yanktonai Sioux
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, Indiana University {{Authority control Language families Caddo